Daily Archives: October 1, 2009

With only two sleeps left until Nana and Papa make the trip back to close on their new house in Ontario, we decided to take our first cooler day in their visit to explore Warm Springs, Pine Mountain and FDR state park.

Once we got to Warm Springs my Dad was thrilled to discover a motorbike museum had opened since his last visit to the area. We spent more than an hour exploring the historic bikes and watching Dad re-live his biking glory days.

Much to his delight, my mackerdoodle seemed almost as excited as her papa. She matched him step for step, ride for ride.

After a great barbecue lunch, the mackerdoodle went from quarter ride to quarter ride, never realizing that the insertion of a quarter would make the object do something. She was perfectly happy to sit on the carousel horses, turn the wheel on the Pink Panther paddy wagon and push the buttons on what she called the “Ice Cream Bus”.

After such an exciting morning, one would think that things couldn’t get MORE exciting, but if one thought that, one would be wrong.

Arriving home after our motorbike and toy riding palooza, I began to fold my clean laundry and discuss supper with my parents while my mom settled into reading Go Dog Go to the mackerdoodle. The idyllic scene was interrupted by my telephone ringing and a Realtor asking if she could show my home in 15 minutes. I countered at an hour. They arrived in 45 minutes. While Mom, Dad and I ran around like crazy people trying to get the house ready, the mackerdoodle happily swept the front porch and generally stayed out of our way.

As we left the house to the potential buyers, my mom and dad suggested we go down the street to Burger King for supper. Because clearly the toddler hadn’t been given enough entertainment opportunities during this long day, I decided to let her run a little in the play room. I mean all she ever does is climb a few steps and laugh at me through the mesh.

Until today.

Today she climbed up the stairs and happily disappeared into the overhead tunnel maze. By disappear I mean DISAPPEAR. The cheesedoodle was exhausted and wailing and all I knew was that my mackerdoodle was happily playing, all by herself, in a collection of plastic tubes suspended a story above the Burger King kids room. I climbed the ladder myself and called to her, but to no avail. I really thought I was going to have to army crawl through the colored plastic to find her. I really didn’t know if I could do it.

Fortunately some older children in the tunnels were happy to look for my mackerdoodle and she was happy to join them in their journey through the tunnels and eventually down the slide. She looked at me and pointed back at the tunnels saying, “I yike tunnews. I yike kids.” as we walked her sleepy brother out to the van for home.